SHE is used to facing a classroom of children, but yesterday, a primary school teacher stood in court to face charges.

The teacher, 39, was charged with eight counts of forgery in relation to the 2007 Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) Tamil Language papers.

The teacher, from a school in the northern part of Singapore, is accused of making corrections to the answer scripts of three of her Tamil students, with the intention of deceiving the markers of the papers into believing that they were given by the students.

The New Paper broke the story on 19 Nov last year, after a whistleblower alerted us to the alleged tampering.

The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau started investigations in November.

On 5 Oct, after the Tamil exam ended, the three students allegedly handed in their scripts to the teacher, who was invigilating.

We are not naming the teacher or the school because the students cannot be identified, as they are minors.

She is alleged to have made changes to the composition, multiple choice and fill-in-the-blanks sections of their papers before submitting the scripts to her supervisor.

This is the first known breach of security of the national examination.

The alleged tampering was uncovered during the centralised marking of PSLE papers, from 16Oct to 19Oct.

The affected scripts were eventually re-marked by Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board's Chief Examiner for Tamil language, based on the pupils' original answers.

CALM IN COURT

Yesterday, the teacher, who was dressed in black and orange and had her hair plaited, looked calm as she waited to be called up in court.

She was accompanied by a man and a woman.

In the dock, she stood with her arms folded and was told by the court clerk to put her hands by her side.

The teacher, who was represented by lawyer Anand Nalachandran, appeared stoic as her case was brought up in court.

District Judge Victor Yeo set bail at $10,000 and ordered her passport to be impounded.

The hearing was over in five minutes. She was then led out to a room to wait for her bail to be settled.

She stayed in the courthouse before emerging at about 2.30pm.

A spokesman from the Ministry of Education told The New Paper yesterday that it will decide on the appropriate course of action after the outcome of the court proceedings.

A pre-trial conference has been fixed for 20 Feb.

If convicted of forgery for the purpose of cheating, she faces a jail term of up to seven years and a fine on each charge.

This article was first published by The New Paper on Feb 6, 2008.